Page:Folklore1919.djvu/449

Rh the stone platforms of the ahu or burial places, while those without these head coverings were isolated or stood on the roadways.

Perhaps the point of greatest importance from the comparative point of view is the discovery that the platforms on which the statues of the burial places were erected often had a pyramidal form. This discovery reveals in Easter Island an association of stone images and pyramidal platforms which goes far to bring the monuments into line with other examples of the megalithic art of Polynesia and Melanesia. The special feature of Easter Island is the great labour and care devoted to the making of the images and the relatively rough nature of the platforms on which they were erected. The special mystery of Easter Island resolves itself into the problem why the megalithic settlers should have expended such efforts in the manufacture of images which elsewhere in Oceania are so much less prominent features of their handiwork.

Quite as important as the contribution made to our knowledge of the stone-work are the new facts, due especially to the work of Mrs. Routledge herself, concerning the less material aspects of culture about which until now we have been almost wholly ignorant. One mystery of Easter Island, that presented by the engraved tablets and the script, Mrs. Routledge failed to elucidate, though she came so tantalisingly near progress in this direction as to suggest that if the expedition had taken place a few years earlier another striking success would have attended its work. The most important result of the investigation into the customs and beliefs of the people was the discovery of the cult of the sooty tern and of the first egg of the season, but the readers of Folk-Lore are already acquainted with this topic, and attention may here be directed to the facts concerning the social organisation, the modes of disposal of the dead, and other rites which help to bring the culture of Easter Island into relation with that of other parts of Polynesia.

In dealing with this portion of the book I must be content to point out the remarkable similarity between the social organisation of Easter Island and that of another outlier of Polynesian culture, the far distant Tikopia. In each case we have the